


We Feel it Through Our Skin

by mytimehaspassed



Category: Leverage
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, F/M, M/M, Minor Character Death, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-01
Updated: 2013-11-01
Packaged: 2017-12-31 03:13:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1026591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mytimehaspassed/pseuds/mytimehaspassed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The job in Marseille is, frankly, dull. Eliot spends most of his time cleaning the blood off of his knuckles and scamming his way around the few French phrases he picked randomly out of a stolen, dog-eared guidebook than actually thieving.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Feel it Through Our Skin

**WE FEEL IT THROUGH OUR SKIN**  
LEVERAGE  
Hardison/Parker/Eliot; Nate/Sophie  
 **WARNINGS** : Descriptions of violence; mentions of murder; non-major character death.  
 **NOTES** : Super dark, pre-show AU.

  
The job in Marseille is, frankly, dull. Eliot spends most of his time cleaning the blood off of his knuckles and scamming his way around the few French phrases he picked randomly out of a stolen, dog-eared guidebook than actually thieving.

He travels through fishing villages, throwing euros at the owners of crumbling hostels and bed and breakfasts outside of the tourist districts, carrying on whole conversations with his eyebrows, sleeping in chairs, taping knives to the underside of tables just in case. He only uses his phone once, maybe twice a day, to ensure that he is aware of any and all updates, and that GPS would be worthless, here one moment, gone the next, Eliot’s traveling sideshow of fists.

He gets paid in dollars, in cash, thick stacks of American money that is bound and placed gently in an obvious – so fucking obvious – duffel bag slid across the floor of a quaint, busy outdoor café. He takes out a couple of bills, just to make sure that they’re real, and nods once at the delivery man, setting down a handful of coins for the herbal tea he never drank. He walks back to the house he’s staying in, careful to circle the block once, twice, walking fast enough to lose a shadow before going inside.

Opening the door to his room, he’s instantly aware of three things: the light he hasn’t used for two days is on, haloing the center of a dusty, torn book that he’s never picked up; the knife he had stashed in the bathroom, just under the lip of the tub, is laying open on the bed, almost within arm’s reach; and the blonde at his table chewing thoughtfully on a bowl of cereal is most definitely not room service.

“Parker,” Eliot hisses, and Parker merely grins up at him, her lips stained with milk.

***

The last time he had seen her, she had been conveniently wearing less clothes, her mouth pink and small against his, her fingers spread out wide across his chest, his hands encircling her waist, moving her up and down with no effort at all.

She had scraped her nails across his face, drawing blood, and, later, Hardison had licked it clean, making a small, innocuous joke about watching out for the goods.

***

She tells Eliot that she was in the neighborhood, a lie if he ever heard one. She stretches her legs out, stacking them haphazardly across his own, her ankles overlapping, her face giving away nothing. She’s dressed in black, her blonde hair aflame in the sunlight that makes it through the tattered, hand-stitched curtains, and her hands are steady, resolved, pushing the empty bowl of cereal away from her.

Eliot has a Mark XIX Desert Eagle in brushed chrome hidden inches away from his fingers, flush against the back of the armchair that’s sitting unfolded in the corner, and his hands ache to hold it, to just lift it up and push the barrel under Parker’s chin, her wide smile never quite reaching her eyes. It’s not that he necessarily likes guns, or that he likes using them, especially on someone he could almost trust, but he’s seen the way that Parker fights – fluid, dangerous, unpredictable – and he really doesn’t want any more scars.

“You here to offer me a job?” he asks, and Parker laughs at him, short and sharp.

“You could say that,” she says.

Parker slides a first class ticket to Baltimore across the table and he pockets it absentmindedly, never taking his eyes off her. She’s still, perfectly so, and he knows that she’s trying to con him, but grifting was never Parker’s specialty, even as a member of Nathan Ford’s dream team.

“Hardison doesn’t know I’m here,” she says, and Eliot’s face doesn’t even move. “But he kind of needs your help.”

“Who did he piss off this time?” Eliot says, leaning back in his seat, his fingers itching once more for his gun, for the knife lying useless on the bed.

Parker’s mouth moves once, like she wants to say something, but thinks better of it. “Come with me,” she whispers instead, her palm fast and warm over his.

Eliot sighs, looking down at her hand, their fingers interlacing. He never says yes, never agrees, but when he looks back up, Parker’s smile is blinding.

***

Eliot had met Parker and Hardison through Nathan Ford, when he was more or less on this side of legal, rounding them up for an elaborate, Robin Hood-esque heist that went mostly and spectacularly wrong. Sophie, the grifter, had ended up with fourteen stitches above her heart and – after the breathless, worried jaunt to the hospital – Nate had told them all to scatter, his voice betraying nothing except the slick pull from the flask he kept in his back pocket.

Hardison and Parker had gone to South Africa and Eliot had ended up in Brazil and he had figured that that would be it, the last he saw of any of them, until Hardison hacked into one of his private bank accounts in the Cayman Islands and lifted a quarter of a million dollars in an attempt to invite him back to the States. It had been easy to track him down, easy because Hardison didn’t even try, but also easy because he was Eliot.

When he found him, in a shit apartment in Fresno, Eliot had opened the door without knocking and Hardison had grinned up at him, lazily, and said something to the effect that it was about time, his fingers curling around the bottle of orange soda on his desk. They spent two days in bed, three more when Parker scaled the brick expanse of Hardison’s apartment and – literally – dropped in through the window, pulling her shirt over her head and smiling wide, beautiful, for hours.

They spent nine months together, on and off, Eliot working jobs in Israel and Ireland and Pakistan, but always, always, coming back to Hardison’s apartment. They swapped stories about the best things they ever stole, about each bruise and break and strain, about the scars that litter their bodies, about the jobs that went perfectly, about the ones that didn’t.

Parker talked little about her childhood, little about her foster parents, and most of the time Eliot said nothing at all. Hardison, though, Hardison had talked for all of them, talked about his past, talked about his work, talked about everything and nothing all at the same time, and the only way that either of them could ever shut him up would be to start kissing him and never stop, Eliot pulling him closer, his fingers curled dangerously in Hardison’s shirt, Parker somehow between them, her mouth first on Hardison’s neck and then on Eliot’s and then lower and lower and lower still.

The apartment was Eliot’s home for a little while and then –

And then Eliot left one day to get something from his car and never returned.

***

They knew he wasn’t dead. They knew he didn’t leave for a job.

Hardison had yelled as much on four of the nine voicemails he left on all of Eliot’s burners, telling him about the worldwide internet crawl for his face, picking him up on red light cameras in Corpus Christi, on CCTV in London, on a (fake) driver’s license in Istanbul. Beneath the veneer of hard work, his callused typing fingers, the angry chewing on gummy frogs, Hardison’s voice ached with unanswered questions.

Parker never even bothered to call.

***

On the flight back to the States, Eliot flirting mercilessly with each flight attendant, he looks Parker over the rim of his plastic cup and asks her what she wants him to do.

She tells him that Hardison had gotten in bed with someone dangerous, someone as intelligent if not more so than Nate, someone who knows all of their tricks. His name begins with a D or an M, Parker isn’t exactly sure because she’s only learned bits and pieces from what she can find or overhear, financial statements turned into scraps of paper, whispered phone conversations in the dark of the bathroom. The whole time, Hardison fiercely adamant that he can take care of it – can earn or steal or win back the three million dollars that had been lost between them – telling Parker not to pawn off some of her (literally) priceless jewels, to not dip into her rainy day fund.

The night before she left for France, Hardison had been visited by a couple of D or M’s thugs, been given a stern talking to that was less moving mouths and more moving fists. Hardison had barely escaped breaking his ribs, something that makes Eliot wince, swallowing his whiskey down in one burning sip.

Parker leans forward in her seat, her hand on his arm, the concern almost, but not quite, ruining the delicate mask of her face, and says, “I need you to kill him.”

Eliot makes a fist, crushing the plastic cup between his fingers, and says, “No problem.”

***

Eliot doesn’t count his kills.

With all of the faces and names memorized, all of the dates remembered, all of the last words on the tip of their tongues, all of the cries for mothers or fathers or god above, he’s never needed to.

***

When Hardison sees Eliot, he punches him.

It hurts Hardison more than it does Eliot, Hardison’s fist cradled in his other hand, the dark, purple smudges of bruising along his right eye, his split lip, his carefully bound torso. Hardison doesn’t say anything for one, two, three moments, Eliot wiping away the blood from his mouth, Parker standing beside them with an apprehensive look on her face, never intervening.

Eliot says, “I guess I deserved that.” And then, “Parker says you need my help.”

Hardison makes a sarcastic sound, rolling his eyes, and turns to Parker, indignant. “I can’t believe you told him,” he says. Parker doesn’t move, doesn’t say anything, and he throws his hands up, walking back towards his station, the laptop he’s working off of, his fingers clacking against the keyboard in double time. “You know I can take care of my damn self,” he continues, swallowing a mouthful of orange soda.

Parker shrugs at Eliot and goes to stand behind Hardison, her hand hovering over his shoulder, not quite touching. Eliot follows her and crosses his arms, staring at Hardison’s screen. “So who is this guy?” he says. “Russian? Nigerian? By your bruises, he clearly has muscle.”

Hardison doesn’t turn around, his mouth thick with regret. “You already know him,” he says. His fingers are paused above the keys, still, unmoving when he looks up at Eliot. He looks apologetic, older, the bruises that mar his face almost weighing him down, and he sighs. “His name is Damien Moreau.”

Eliot can feel his blood pressure rising, his hands curling into fists, his voice nothing but a growl. “God dammit, Hardison.”

***

Eliot has regretted only four of the jobs he’s ever taken.

Over the years, he’s honed a sharp sense of knowing when he shouldn’t take a job or when he will be asked to do something he doesn’t want to. He’s also honed a sharp sense of knowing who he shouldn’t work for, and every feeling – every moralistic intuition – was developed while Eliot worked for Damien Moreau. He’s dreamed of killing him more nights than not.

Hardison objects to the plan at first, shaking his head silently. “We can’t just kill him,” he says, and then again, softer, more resigned. He knows that this is what Eliot does, that this is Eliot’s job, but he’s never seen it up close, he’s never gotten this personal.

“He won’t ever stop,” Eliot says, and sits down beside Hardison, almost touching. “You might be able to pay him back the money you owe him, but then he’ll raise the interest again and again. He’ll keep sending guys out to rough you up until you have nothing left. And then he’ll send someone like me to kill you, Hardison. I know exactly how he works.” He pauses, and then, almost an afterthought, “It’s how I used to work.”

Hardison looks at him and then at Parker. “There’s always another way,” he says. “Nate –“

“Nate won’t return my calls,” Parker says, folding her hands in her lap. “We’re on our own.”

“Jesus,” Hardison says. And then, “I won’t ever be able to look Nana in the face again.”

“You’ll be okay,” Eliot says, and means it, but claps him on the shoulder hard to take away the sting. Hardison makes a whimpering sound and Parker takes his hand in hers for a brief moment, bringing it up to her lips, kissing the dark bruises there.

Hardison looks at Eliot, searching for some kind of comfort, but Eliot can’t even hold his gaze.

***

They plan.

***

It’s easy for Melissa Voight to infiltrate Damien Moreau’s private fundraising event, even easier to flirt her way over to the man himself. She carries a flute of champagne in her left hand and a clutch in the other, her blonde hair piled high on her head, expensive, square-framed glasses perched on her nose, and Damien looks at her once in the shadow of his bodyguards and then again, more interested this time, a slow smile sliding clean across his face.

Melissa graduated from Yale summa cum laude, she mentions, her voice high and almost breathless in his ear, his hand snaking around her waist. Dual major in art history and comparative literature, because sometimes she’s just really indecisive. She speaks four languages fluently, another three only enough to ask for directions or hard liquor, and Damien laughs at that, his hand hovering over Melissa’s thigh, his fingers warm on the place where her hem ends.

Melissa drinks what she’s given slowly and asks Damien what he does for a living, watches him smile sharply, say something innocuous, nonchalant. She knows what that means, she says. Melissa’s mother had warned her against men just like Damien. She should stay away from him, she tells him, and her smile is dangerous, and his hands are heavy on her skin.

Unlike Alice White, Melissa Voight is exactly his type.

“Do you want to get out of here?” Damien asks, his lips resting just above Melissa’s ear.

“I thought you’d never ask,” she says, and follows him out the door.

***

It takes Eliot five seconds to put down the two bodyguards following Moreau, even less to crowd both Parker and Moreau into the waiting limousine, Hardison at the wheel, pressing the accelerator even before the door closes. Parker opens her clutch and takes out Eliot’s borrowed Desert Eagle, her hands steady even with the lack of training.

Damien coughs out something like a laugh, wholly unsurprised. “Eliot Spencer, I should have known,” he says, folding his hands in his lap. “You here to warn me off from collecting my debts?”

Eliot says nothing.

“Ah,” Damien says, “This must be the part where you kill me, then.”

“Not yet,” Eliot says, and waits until Hardison drives further out, to the place they all agreed on, setting the car in park, turning off the engine.

“Get out,” Eliot growls and pushes Damien out of the limo, onto the ground, telling him to get on his knees, his voice rough to his own ears.

Parker hands him the gun. Hardison stays in the car.

Damien opens his mouth to speak, maybe to plead or offer money or something else, but Eliot doesn’t let him say a word.

***

Eliot always shoots twice, just to make sure.

***

They don’t need to run, not with Hardison’s skills, not with Eliot’s, but they do it anyway, this time together, buying a cheap, used car and heading west, out towards the desert. Parker makes them stop four, five, six times along the way, buying children’s sunglasses and breath mints and Cheetos at poorly maintained gas stations, violently flipping through radio stations until Eliot has to make a no radio rule if only for his own sanity.

Hardison points out weird roadside attractions with this odd sense of wonderment, Graceland Too, the Blue Whale of Oklahoma, the Cadillac Ranch near Amarillo, reading the Wikipedia pages from top to bottom on the only shitty cell phone service he can get.

Eliot doesn’t talk much, but he drives, mostly because doing something with his hands is calming, reassuring, and guarantees that he won’t be able to strangle either of them.

They stop at motels and, after the first night, start sleeping together again. Parker doesn’t ask Eliot why he left and Hardison only asks how long he’s going to stay this time, if he’ll leave by the end of this road trip or whatever the hell it is.

Eliot doesn’t know, can’t make promises, won’t, so he says nothing at all, his mouth small on Parker’s shoulder, his hand curled around Hardison’s dark wrist.

***

They stop in Vegas, and Parker leaves with two hundred and fifty thousand dollars of the casino’s money and a warning never to show her face within the walls of the Bellagio ever again.

Eliot laughs louder than he means to when Parker tells him the story in the hotel, her hair pinned up in a towel, one shoulder of her robe sloping down, exposing her skin. Hardison hacks into the casino’s database and removes her face from the list of banned patrons, and Parker smiles widely and pounces on him as a thank you.

***

They make it to Seattle on fumes, the car coughing and sputtering and moaning with each mile. Hardison says, “I told you not to buy American, man,” and Eliot gives him a look, pulling the car into the driveway of a nice, modest-looking house, the bay window curtains shaking where someone has pulled them back.

They get out of the car and move towards the door, Parker so light on her toes that she’s almost skipping. Eliot knows that he knows they’re there, can see his outline through the frosted glass of the door, but he knocks anyway, says, “Sorry,” when the door opens. And again, “Sorry we didn’t call first.”

Nate looks back at them warily, looks over his shoulder at something behind him, and then back to them again. “It’s okay,” he says, even though it’s clearly not and he’s kind of disturbed by their sudden appearance after a particularly botched job almost two years ago.

Sophie comes up from behind Nate and Nate makes room for her, sliding an arm around her waist. “Oh, hello,” she says, her accent lilting, her smile genuine. She’s curious, too, but never shows it.

“We were wondering,” Hardison begins, and then stops, unsure where to go from there. They hadn’t practiced a speech in the car, hadn’t thought past Nate and Nate’s house, hadn’t exactly analyzed why they wanted to come or what they were going to do once there.

“We were wondering,” Eliot continues for him. “Whether you had any more jobs for us. Good, you know, honest jobs.” Hardison nods next to him, Parker too, shrugging unapologetically.

Nate’s mouth makes a little o, finally understanding why they’re here, and then he moves back, gestures behind him. “Please, come in,” he says, and they do.  



End file.
